ng her calico sunbonnet she came suddenly upon
the gorgeous social battalion--so fully equipped with the bayonets of
class and the machine guns of curiosity. And she captured it! As her son
had never seen the man or crowd of men of whom he was afraid, she, with
her philosophy of life, looked upon everyone as worthy of friendship and
the meeting with them a pleasure and not an occasion for disconcertment.
If they approached her with a greeting of wit, her answer was quick and
gentle, and as playful as a mountain stream. If their mood was serious,
she immediately impressed them with her frankness and her common sense.
She went everywhere the program provided, and enjoyed every moment of
it. As she was preparing to return home her appreciation was expressed
in her declaration that she "intended to come again, when she could go
quietly about and really see things--when policemen would not have to
make way for her."

Alvin was beginning life anew, decorated with the Distinguished Service
Cross and the rare Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest award of
his country to a soldier; the Medaille Militaire and the Croix de Guerre
with Palm, of France; the Croca di Guerra, of Italy; the War Medal of
Montenegro; the Legion of Honor; medals for gallantry from Tennessee and
the Methodist Centenary, and the Commonwealth of Rhode Island was
beckoning to him, to decorate him with the medal the State's legislature
had voted. There were the gifts the people of Tennessee had given him,
and others that began to come from all sections of the Union. The
mountaineers of the State of Georgia clubbed together and sent a
remembrance--and presents came from the far West.

Several cities offered him a home if he would come to live among their
people. Communities, wanting him, selected their most desirable farming
sites and tendered them. But the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf"
was home to him, and while in France he had said he wished to live
"nowhere but at Pall Mall." So the Rotary Clubs, headed by the Nashville
organization, raised the fund for the "York Home" through public
subscription, and there has been given to him four hundred acres of the
"bottom land" of the Valley of the Wolf and one of the timbered
mountainsides--land that had been homesteaded and first brought into
cultivation by "Old Coonrod" Pile, his pioneer ancestor--land that had
remained in the possession of his family until lost in the vicissitudes
of the days follo